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Menu & Recipes

Menu Templates and Recipes

20 Weeks of Menus and yummy recipe ideas along with shopping lists for that week.

Nutrition

To have an adequate menu that provides the correct nutrition for children we need to provide at least 50% of children’s daily nutrition requirements. (Based on the “Get up and grow: Healthy Eating and Physical Activity for Early Childhood”) The following menu templates and menus are based on their advice. Using their checklists we have created menus that include foods needed to meet the nutritional requirements in the recommended frequency for children in long day care. The menus show different ways to meet these guidelines.

Basing the menu on these requirements ensures that for the main menus:

Red meat is included on the menu at least 2 times a week.

White Meat is included at least 1 time a week

– Vegetarian dishes (based on eggs, cheese, milk, soy or legumes) are included on the menu at least 1 a week

On each day that there is a white meat or vegetarian meal served, there is at least one other iron – containing food included in the meal. Iron containing foods include; dried apricots, spinach, wholemeal bread, legumes such as lentils and chickpeas, broccoli, whole meal pasta, egg, cabbage and cauliflower.

A fruit or vegetable high in vitamin C is served with vegetarian meal. Fruits and vegetables high in vitamin C include red capsicum, broccoli, kiwi fruit, cauliflower, red cabbage, citrus fruit (oranges and mandarins), strawberries, rockmelon, green peas, sweet potato, and pineapple.

High fat foods are not served more than twice a fortnight. High fat foods include chips, nuggets, sausages, commercial pies, pasties, deep fried foods, high fat pastry based foods, ice cream and processed meat (e.g: straz, Kabana, chicken loaf, processed ham and bacon).